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The brothers accused of the Boston Marathon bombings attended a
mosque in Cambridge, Mass., linked to other radical individuals and
groups.

The Islamic Society of Boston mosque has been associated with several
people investigated for terrorism, including its first president,
Abdulrahman Alamoudi, who was convicted of plotting to assassinate a
Saudi prince, reports USA Today.

Its sister mosque in Boston, the Islamic Society of Boston Cultural
Center, has invited speakers known to defend terrorism suspects, the
newspaper reported.

Charles Jacobs, head of the interfaith group Americans for Peace and
Tolerance, told the newspaper, “We don’t know where these boys were
radicalized, but this mosque has a curriculum that radicalizes people.
Other people have been radicalized there.”

The FBI has not implicated either mosque in terrorist activity, but USA
Today cites several cases in which mosque attendees and officials were
involved in terrorism, including Massachusetts Institute of Technology
graduate Aafia Siddiqui, who prayed at the Cambridge mosque. She was
arrested in 2008 in Afghanistan . She had cyanide canisters and plans
for a chemical attack in New York City in her possession.

The Cambridge mosque reportedly was founded in 1982 by students at MIT,
Harvard, and other Boston-area schools. The sister mosque was
established in 2009.

Both also reportedly are associated with the Muslim American Society, an
organization founded in 1993 that describes itself as an American
Islamic revival movement.

Zhudi Jasser, president of the American Islamic Forum for Democracy,
told USA Today that its teachings make some followers feel “like their
national identity is completely absent and hollow, and that vacuum can
be filled by (radical) Islamic ideology, which is supremacist and looks
upon the West as evil.”

Anwar Kazmi, a member of the Cambridge mosque’s board of trustees, told
the newspaper the mosque is moderate and condemns the Boston bombings.
On Monday, the mosque reportedly e-mailed members a warning that the FBI
may question them.

In a bizarre twist befitting a Hollywood conspiracy theory movie, the AP reports today that Boston Marathon bombing suspect Tamerlan Tsarnaev was influenced by conspiracy theories, including Alex Jones’ website Infowars, which has been pushing a narrative that the Tsarnaev brothers were patsies set up by a government cabal to take the fall for the bombing.

Tamerlan “took an interest in Infowars,” according to Elmirza Khozhugov, the ex-husband of Tamerlan’s sister. He was also apparently interested in anti-Semitic conspiracy theories and was trying to find a copy of “The Protocols of the Learned Elders of Zion,” one of the most notorious conspiracy tomes of history.

There’s no doubt that Jones will take this report as confirmation of everything he’s been preaching. The report, he will claim, was planted in the AP — the government controls the media, after all — and is a naked attempt to discredit him and definitive proof that the globalist cabal views him as a serious threat. He was getting too close to the truth in Boston, so they decided to try to take him out. It’ll be a big shot in the arm to Jones’ grand theory of the bombings, which has suffered from an embarrassing lack of evidence and logical consistently . He said the government first planned to blame the Tea Party, but then was found out and had to switch Plan B — blame Muslim extremists — so with the AP report, Jones will say, the government is trying to return to Plan A.

Meanwhile, in the real world, it underscores how dangerous and seductive conspiracy theories can be. The ideology of al-Qaida, which seems to be the primary influence on the Tsarnaev plot, can be seen as a conspiracy theory in itself, which places the United States at the center of all evil in the world. Even the extermination campaigns of the Third Reich were essentially built on a conspiracy theory.

UPDATE: Sure enough, within minutes of the AP story breaking, Jones told BuzzFeed’s Rosie Gray that it’s all a conspiracy against him:

“I’ve seen this before,” Jones said. “The federal government trying to connect me to tragedies. That’s the media and the government’s own conspiracy theories.” Jones compared the situation to when Richard Andrew Poplawski, a Pittsburgh man who killed three police officers in 2009, was shown to be a conspiracy theorist who frequently visited the Infowars website. “It’s standard for them to talk to people, go through computers, and any time someone’s done something bad they connect it to us,” Jone said.

Boston marathon bomber Tamerlan Tsarnaev was thrown out of his local mosque for 'crazy' behavior after getting involved a 'shouting match' with his imam according to one member of the congregation.

Described as being full of rage by a worshiper who would give his name only as Muhammad, Tamerlan was ejected from the Islamic Society of Boston Cultural Center three months ago for claiming that Martin Luther King Jr. was not a man Muslims should look to emulate.

This revelation comes as Ruslan Tsarni, an uncle of Tamerlan, claimed that his nephew had fallen under the spell of a mysterious religious leader in Cambridge, Massachusetts, who radicalized him and his brother Dzhokhar into committing Monday's terror outrage.

The dramatic confrontation between Tamerlan and his imam began when the 26-year-old interrupted a solemn Friday prayer service three months ago.

The imam had just offered up assassinated civil rights icon Martin Luther King Jr. as a fine example of a man to emulate - but this reportedly enraged Tamerlan.

'You cannot mention this guy because he’s not a Muslim!' Muhammad recalled Tamerlan shouting, shocking others in attendance according to the LA Times.

Tamerlan Tsarnaev was ejected from his Boston mosque for aggressive behavior after insulting Martin Luther King Jr. during a Friday prayer service three months ago

The eldest Boston bombing suspect had not one but two rage-filled rants in a New England mosque, it was revealed today.

Tamerlan Tsarnaev, who was killed in a police shootout on Thursday night, lashed out at religious leaders at the Islamic Society of Boston Cultural Center on two occasions, the mosque said in a statement Monday, both of which occurred only after he returned from his six-month trip to Russia.

The first outburst came last November when preachers told mosque congregants that it was appropriate for Muslims to celebrate U.S. holidays such as the Fourth of July and Thanksgiving, causing Tamerlan to stand up and argue.

The second was this past January. The mosque said that Tamerlan, who was not a member but visited for Friday evening services often, lashed out at a preacher for lecturing on Martin Luther King Jr’s accomplishments.

According to a release sent out Monday, Tamerlan screamed at the preacher and called him a ‘hypocrite’ and a ‘non-believer’ who was ‘contaminating people’s minds.’

A banner reading "United We Stand For Peace on Earth" stands outside the Islamic Society of Boston mosque in Cambridge. A mosque official confirmed that suspects in the Boston Marathon bombings, worshipped there

Anwar Kazmi, a member of the mosque's board of trustees said that the Tsarnaev brothers were infrequent visitors to the Islamic Society of Boston Cultural Center

VIDEO Tamerlan Tsarnaev was thrown out of mosque for angry rant

Later, volunteer leaders of the mosque met with him and told him that he would not be welcome at service if he interrupted again. The group said he continued attending sometimes and did not cause any more problems.

Tamerlan’s younger brother, Dzhokhar, who is in critical condition at Beth Israel Deaconess, was arraigned Monday. Officials told the Associated Press that the brothers were motivated by religion but appear not to be tied to any Islamic terrorist groups.

Anwar Kazmi, a member of the mosque's board of trustees, told a USA Today reporter that 26-year-old Tamerlan Tsarnaev, who died early Friday morning after a shootout with police, was an infrequent attendee for about a year-and-a-half, while 19-year-old Dzhokhar A. Tsarnaev, who was captured hiding in a boat in Watertown on Friday night, attended only once.

Responding to the revelation that both brothers had attended their mosque, the Islamic Society issued a statement to say that while the suspects were known to other worshipers, they could not have predicted their horrific bombing of the Boston marathon which claimed three lives and injured over 180 people.

Imam Suhaib Webb, of the Islamic Society of Boston Cultural Center, the city's largest mosque, said in an interview that he had recently heard of the incident. 'That's a sign right there that his views aren't mainstream,' Webb said.

They pledged to aid federal and city law enforcement to leave 'no stone uncovered in finding any suspects connected to the bombs.'

The brothers are believed to have placed one of the bombs near to a Boston store where their mother had been sacked for stealing clothes

Yesterday the brothers¿ mother, Zubeidat, said the FBI once told her that Tamerlan was ¿really an extremist leader and that they were afraid of him'

Meanwhile, the Tsarnaev bother's uncle Ruslan Tsarni, who described the pair as 'losers' after they were named as suspects, raised the worrying possibility that they were radicalized by a domestic source and not a foreign one.

The lawyer said that Tamerlan especially had fallen under the thrall of an as-yet unidentified religious leader while living in Cambridge, Massachusetts.

Ruslan Tsarni says he grew concerned about Tamerlan Tsarnaev when he told him in a 2009 phone conversation that he had chosen 'God's business' over work or school.

Tsarni said he then contacted a family friend who told him Tsarnaev had been influenced by a recent convert to Islam.

'There certainly were mentors,’’ Tsarni said to the Today show. 'I was shocked when I heard his words, his phrases, when every other word he starts sticking in words of God. I question what he’s doing for work, (and) he claimed he would just put everything in the will of God.

[caption

'It was a big concern to me. He called me 'confused' when I started explaining to him, make yourself useful to yourself and to your family and maybe you’ll have extra to share with everybody else.'

'I strongly believe they were just puppets and executors of something of bigger scale,' Tsarni told Savannah Guthrie.

The Rhode Island resident told his nephew that 'he was giving up on everything, struggling with your own shadow' by wholeheartedly turning to Islan.

'He had been sort of brainwashing him,' Tsarni told the Sunday Times of London.

The brothers' parents told NBC News they believe their sons were framed and Tsarni said a family acquaintance told him there was an outside influence on Tamerlan.

'He said there is someone who brainwashed him, some new convert to Islam,’’ Tsarni said. “I would like to stress (the acquaintance was) of Armenian descent.’

The uncle also speculated that Tamerlan’s younger brother, Dzhokhar, was manipulated into the bombing plot.

'Dzhokhar is just a kid who wanted to have older brother to look up at. Except for being a murderer, he’s been a loving brother.'

'That so-called radicalization was seeded right here, not in the Caucasus, not in Russia, not in Chechnya, which he has nothing to do with,' Tsarni said.

The extremist views which Tamerlan developed over the course of the past three years caught the attention of Russian security officals who asked the FBI to question him in 2011 - before he traveled to Chechnya and Dagestan last year.

The FBI are said to have discovered nothing incriminating during their conversations with Tamerlan.

However, friends said that Tamerlan became increasingly vocal in his views, especially concerning Christians.

'He said . . . the Koran spoke more of the truth then the Bible. He said the Bible was used as an excuse to invade other countries,' said Albrecht Ammon, 18, a student at Cambridge Rindge and Latin School, which the bombers also attended according to the New York Post.

And it has been revealed today that Tamerlan had direct contact with Chechen terrorists – and was ‘monitored’ by investigators for five years.

The FBI put Tamerlan Tsarnaev, 26, under surveillance after receiving an explicit warning from the Russian intelligence services.

Rebel: One theory is that Tamerlan Tsarnaev was inspired by Doku Umarov, a Chechen terrorist known as Russia's Bin Laden

Umarov has recently widened his fight for Chechen independence to a wider Jihadist agenda

VIDEO Could the Boston bombers have been inspired by Umarov?

But despite apparently telling his mother that Tamerlan was an ‘extremist’ leader, the FBI eventually discounted the possibility that he was a threat.

Yesterday the brothers’ mother, Zubeidat, said the FBI once told her that Tamerlan was ‘really an extremist leader and that they were afraid of him’. She added: ‘He was controlled by the FBI for five years. They knew what my son was doing. They were following every step of his.’

And his father, Anzor Tsarnaev, said investigators warned his son: ‘We know what sites you are on, we know where you are calling, we know everything about you. Everything. We are checking and watching.’

Russia's Bin Laden Doku Umarov was believed to be behind the Moscow Metro bombing in 2010 which killed at least 40

Despite all this, the FBI found no substantive evidence that he was engaged in terror-related activities though they continued to ‘monitor his internet use and contacts’.

According to an intelligence source, Russia remained convinced that Tamerlan, an ethnic Chechen, was in ‘direct contact’ with Islamist militants, most likely based in the strife-torn southern Russian region of Dagestan, where he lived for two years with his family prior to moving to the US.

During a six-month visit to Russia last year – a trip US investigators are investigating – it is understood Tamerlan visited Dagestan, which is now regarded as more unstable than Chechnya.

One theory is that Tamerlan and Dzhokhar, who was in thrall to his older brother, may have been ‘inspired’ by a rebel leader known as Russia’s Bin Laden.

A light beam from a helicopter, top right, aims in the direction of Watertown, where officials searched for Dzhokhar A. Tsarnaev on Friday

Dzhokhar Tsarnaev is apprehended on Friday evening after almost 24-hours on the run following a week of terror in Boston

Doku Umarov, like the Tsarnaev brothers, is an ethnic Chechen from the war-torn Caucasus region that lies between Europe and Central Asia.

He has been accused of masterminding some of the worst terrorist atrocities in Russia, including suicide bombings carried out by two women on Moscow’s Metro system in 2010 which killed at least 40.

Significantly, while Umarov was originally fighting only for Chechen independence he has more recently embraced a wider jihadist agenda.

It raises the terrifying prospect of further atrocities being carried out across the globe by disaffected individuals inspired by the jihadist rhetoric of the former Chechen leaders.

Intriguingly, President Putin offered to ‘provide assistance’ to the investigation in Boston before it was known that there was a Chechen link to the bombing.

‘Fighting terrorism is more important than political posturing,’ said a Russian source yesterday.

‘If we work together properly and deeply, we have much more chance of defeating those who want to maim and kill.’

This one says he was threatened with eviction and when his name came out, the people/leaders at the mosque called the FBI and said we can help you.

FBI agents question members of mosque that Tsarnaevs attended

FBI agents digging into background of bombing suspects Tamerlan and Dzhokhar Tsarnaev get help from Cambridge, MA Mosque members who knew the suspects as some members of Congress want to learn more about FBI contact with Tamerlan before the bombing.

By Michael Isikoff, National Investigative Correspondent, NBC News

Just weeks before the Boston Marathon bombing,Tamerlan Tsarnaev — the suspected mastermind of the plot — was still attending prayer services at a Cambridge mosque where he had previously caused disruptions and been threatened with eviction, a spokesman for the mosque said.

Yusufi Vali, a spokesman for the mosque, said that FBI agents have begun questioning members of the mosque about their interactions with the 26-year-old Tsarnaev, who was killed during a shootout with police last Friday, and his younger brother, Dzohkhar, who is still hospitalized and has been charged with helping carry out the attack.

As soon as mosque leaders learned of Tamerlan Tsarnaev’s alleged involvement, “We immediately called law enforcement and said, ‘Listen, we’ve got folks who knew him and if you need any information, we’re here – and those folks have already met with the FBI.”

Dzhokhar Tsarnaev has told investigators he and his older brother acted alone, learning how to build the pressure cooker bombs by reading the al Qaeda propaganda magazine Inspire online. He said they plotted the bombing to defend Islam because of the U.S. wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, federal law enforcement officials tell NBC News.

FBI agents have also begun reviewing the two brothers’ cellphone and email records and so far have found no sign of accomplices -- or connections to international terror groups, said a counterterrorism source who has been briefed on the investigation.

But there are signs that Tamerlan had become radicalized — apparently from a friend in the United States named “Mischa” — described as a Russian of Armenian descent who was a relatively recent convert to Islam and who lived in Cambridge, according by Tsarnaev’s uncle, Ruslan Tsarni. Tsarni told NBC News that Mischa presented himself as an “exorcist” who specialized in “removing demons from people’s bodies.” He recounted hearing from his brother, Anzor, Tamerlan and Dzhokhar’s father, about an incident in 2007 when the father came home one night and found Mischa lecturing his son about Islamic ways. The father was outraged and ordered Mischa to leave the house. Shortly after that, he said, Tamerlan dropped out of school, telling his parents that music and the arts were incompatible with Islamic teachings.

Ruslan Tsarni said he has told the FBI about Mischa. NBC News has been unable to contact him, and Vali said that he is unaware of anybody in the mosque community who matches the description.

FBI agents are also trying to determine if there were other influences on Tamerlan Tsarnaev from people he may have met with during a six-month trip to Russia last year — during which he spent time in Chechnya and Dagestan, according to his father.

After the trip, a YouTube account was set up filled with postings of radical jihadi videos — including the sermons of Feiz Mohammed, a radical Muslim preacher from Australia who has been investigated by authorities for allegedly inciting violence. Authorities in that country have examined a series of sermons known as the “Death Series,” in which he describes Jews as “pigs” and encourages Muslim parents to offer up their children as soldiers to defend Islam.

Vali said that, after Tamerlan Tsarnaev was identified as a suspect in the Boston bombing last week, congregants reported two incidents in which he had disrupted services at the mosque. The most recent one took place on Martin Luther King Day in January, when Tsarnaev interrupted a talk by a speaker saying King could be compared to the prophet Mohammed.

Tsarnaev stood up and called the speaker a “non-believer” and a “hypocrite,” he said. At that point, “the congregation yelled back, ‘You need to leave.” And then leadership had a conference with him, and told him, that you need to stay silent or you are not welcome here.”

Vali said that Tsarnaev returned to the mosque — as recently as last month — but there were no further disruptions.

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